When Projects End: WaterVation Blog February 2021

I was scrolling through pictures on my phone and was confronted by endless river construction photographs on the quest to find the one decent picture of me and my daughters, which was smashed between images of toe-wood and boulder habitat clusters. Looking through all the photographs stopped me, I had spent so much time on this project and now it was over. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of a project ending and suddenly vanishing from your life. The only comparison I can conjure is a good (or bad) friend moving away and abruptly severing all contact.

The day was cold, windy, overcast, and grey. Alison Hopkins and I had met our El Paso County Project Manager onsite at the Fountain Creek Restoration at Riverside Project. The goal of the visit was a final walkthrough of nearly 12,000 willow and cottonwood stakes that had just been installed late fall of 2020. Our walkthrough went quickly, driven by the biting wind and the quality of plantings and installation… there was not much to discuss. I got in my truck and drove away and that was it, the end of the project, the final final walkthrough.

Perhaps it’s the level of involvement in the project that makes it so special. I joined the project during a post-runoff field collection effort to finalize data capture and field confirmation prior to the final design. We shoved our hands into the freezing creek for pebble counts, trudged across ripping riffles trying to knock us over, flew the drone, and took an endless supply of pictures.

I was excited, this was Fountain Creek! A major stream in Southern Colorado known for a high sediment load, flashy storms, and sadly, impairment. It was a major challenge. I soon started developing two-dimensional hydraulic models, sediment transport models (did I mention we had gage sediment and flow data and two separate stream surveys separated by a year? A nerdy tale by a water resources engineer for another day.), and endless stability and scour calculations.

Suddenly the final plans, report, specifications, and cost estimates were completed. A contractor was selected. I found myself on site two days a week, if not more, providing construction oversight. Throughout the summer my skin warmed from the hot summer sun and I watched the design plans turn into reality.

Being onsite on a frequent basis as a project comes together can be a special, if not sometimes frustrating experience. You gain rapport with the foreman and the best operators, you pull nearby twigs and build miniature versions of the designs as examples, you watch the contractor move earth and rock and wood and water in stunning fashion. You share shade from a nearby tree and satisfaction from a job well done.

After all of this, I find it strange that on a cold windy day it’s over. That is the lifecycle of a project. A new one will come, and I will gain a new fascination with a stream system and new connections and stories and lessons. Of course, WaterVation will be back to Fountain Creek for follow-up monitoring and I’ll stop by when in the area, but it won’t quite be the same and that’s ok.

-Matthew Johnson, PE, CFM

  WaterVation Project Manager